polls but as the senator herself would admit, nothing about the politics of 2018 is predictable, including the fact she could hear loud foot steps from california all the way to washington. thank you so much for being here with us. good night from nbc news headquarters in new york. so here's an unexpected twist in the news. on friday of course you'll remember the deputy chairman of the trump presidential campaign, rick gates, he changed his plea in federal court to guilty. he previously had been pleading not guilty, had been fighting dozens of felony charges. but with his guilty plea on friday, the government agreed not to pursue the charges they had previously brought against him. he pled guilty instead to two new counts, including lying to the fbi and in so doing signed a very thorough cooperation agreement, which compels him now

to become a cooperating witness for robert mueller's prosecutors in the special counsel's office. when all the previous charges were dropped against rick gates in exchange for his guilty plea on those two new charges, mueller's prosecutors basically took off the shelf the earlier indictments in which rick gates and paul manafort had been charged together and they rewrote them so that now all those charges are just against paul manafort. we've now gotten new indictments that are against manafort alone, they incorporate all the charges he and gates used to be facing together, plus a few new ones. we are expecting paul manafort to be arraigned in federal court in washington, d.c. on wednesday of this week, day after tomorrow and then expecting him to be arraigned again in a different federal court in virginia on friday because he is facing dozens of felony charges in both of those jurisdictions. the dozens of felony charges

pending against the trump campaign manager paul manafort obviously present a significant legal challenge for him himself, but the way the charges are laid out, they may indicate potential problems for other people as well. there was a bunch reporting over the weekend quoting former european heads of state all denying that they knew the source of the funds that they had been paid from when manafort, according to the indictment, secretly spent 2 million euros paying all these politicians to lobby for his clients in ukraine. the indictment also mentioned unnamed co-conspirators at various banks and left-handing institutions, people who allegedly worked with rick gates and paul manafort on money laundering and bank fraud schemes. somewhere out there there's a person who recognizes this e-mail, who knows that he or she once sent an e-mail to gates and manafort when they were allegedly cooking up these fake documents to get manafort one of these multi-million dollar

loans. somebody somebody snows this was their e-mail. quote, looks doctored. can't someone just do a clean excel doc and pdf to me? whoever that prn erson is nows t reform's consider him to be a conspirator working at lender b and that robert mueller has that exact e-mail. we know the trouble that rick gates is in and how it's changing as he pled guilty. and we know the trouble that paul manafort is in. but there are clearly other people known to mule are and his investigators and whose identities are known to the prosecutors but have not been made known to the public. that brings us to the issue of the federal savings bank, which is called lender d in the pending indictment against paul manafort. right before manafort and gates joined the trump campaign in

2016, when they were scrambling to get their hands on millions of dollars in cash, including resorting to doctored documents and other illegal means to get those loans, there was this federal savings bank that talked about doing loans with paul manafort and coughed you up an enormous amount of money to paul manafort, $16 million. despite the fact they were a small lender and despite the fact that other banks were turning down paul manafort because his paperwork wasn't passing the smell test. the gigantic loan was about a quarter of total assets that bank had available to loan, which makes it an unusual set of loans in the first place.

but nbc news is reporting that robert mueller and prosecutors are investigating those loans to see if they were a quid pro quo. reportedly he was under the impression that drft was about to name him secretary of the army. he contacted the pentagon to try to arrange briefings for himself for this job which he assumed he was about to get. mueller's prosecutors are reportedly looking into whether those $16 million in loans might have been basically payment for that expected job offer. the loans to manafort were questioned by officials that the bank and one of those people is now cooperating with investigators. ever since that reporting came out and the loans to paul manafort ended up in his

indictment, we've been trying to figure out how tight that case is, not just if there are employees of this bank cop rating with mueller's very lo investigators, we've been trying to find out whether steve calk himself might be cooperating with investigators, too, or if there's anything else we can find out about his personal role in approving his money going out the door from his bank to paul manafort. so we've been trying to figure that out. turns out so is his wife. it is reported these jumbo multimillion dollar loans to paul manafort have a starring role in the divorce proceedings ongoing in cook county, illinois, between the head of that bank and his soon-to-be ex-wife. during their divorce proceedings this past year court records

show that the estranged wife of steve calk, his wife demanded as part of their divorce proceedings that she be allowed to see the entire loan file for any and all loans made to paul manafort from federal savings bank. now i'm not sure why that would be material to this couple's divorce proceedings. it feels like none of our business, right? but it is apparently part of the legal strategy in that divorce that steve calk's estranged wife is raising questions about the lending practices of this bank under her husband's leadership with a particular focus from that money he gave to paul manafort. so steve calk's wife subpoenaed the loan documents. steve calk's divorce lawyers tried it quash that subpoena

from the wife. a cook county judge is overseeing these proceedings. we're not sure if the documentation did get handed over as part of the divorce, but now in addition to the donald trump for president campaign chair, there's the possibility these key records from these loans in question, those records may eventually become public through divorce court. which is nuts. adam schiff, the top democrat on the intelligence committee told us here friday night he believes paul manafort's legal strategy right now in part at least is to basically all but openly beg president trump for a pardon in this case. that may be true but given all the different jurisdictions looking at manafort it may be too late for a presidential pardon to keep him out of serious trouble. there are reports now of nonfederal criminal

investigations into manafort and his various financial dealings in multiple nonfederal jurisdictions. separate and apart from the fact some of these details may come out in a divorce proceeding in chicago. regardless, though, a presidential pardon can only help you with federal matters. it can't help you with any other legal proceeding and, in fact, it might hurt your prospect of prevailing against charges that are brought, say, in state court. we're going to have more on that ahead tonight. we'll talk about the unexpectedly detailed declassified memo from house democrats about the fbi's counterintelligence investigation into the trump campaign. a lot more information in that document than anybody expected to see. before we get to all that tonight, before we get to that story, i want to go back to something scary that happened just a couple weeks before the presidential election in the fall of 2016. it happened in late october in new york city at laguardia airport.

and nbc reporter vaughn hilliard ended up in the middle of this scary incident and it was an amazing night. he came right to our studio from the airport after it happened. here was some of our breaking news footage from that night. as chris and i were just talking about there in the last hour a plane carrying republican vice presidential candidate mike pence, in fact, skidded off the runway at new york's laguardia airport. the important bottom line not only governor pence himself but everyone else on the plane is safe. this is what the plane did to the tarmac at laguardia as it slid off the runway. i didn't know that happened when you slid off the runway. all the air traffic was suspended for over an hour in the wake of this incident. joining us now is a man onboard that plane, he was on the plane when it slid off the runway tonight. let me shake your hand. i'm glad you're okay. >> thank you. >> were you scared? >> the crazy part this isn't the first time -- well, the first time we've gone off the runway but a lot of shaky things.

we had the hard impact and then we went for about two, three seconds, and that's when we started to swerve off to the right and all of a sudden came to a hard, crashing start. -- stop. that's when you looked out the window and you could see that the road was oddly close to where the plane was at -- >> the road with cars on it. >> the road with cars, the circle k across the street. that's when it became real. >> when you say you were trying to get tape, you were filming as you were landing, is that because you were expecting a hard landing because you've had so many? >> it's a joke. it's a joke how long are we going to last? >> you're saying it's become a joke how long we're going to last, that the hard landings on the pence campaign planes are so frequent and so notable that it's a point of discussion among the press corps? >> yes. >> have you only had bad landings in heavy weather -- >> nope. we landed in ft. dodge, iowa, we hit and it felt like we came back up in the air where everybody held their breath for a second.

you could see the blue sky again. we didn't go off the runway at that point. >> that was the night that it happened. that was actually an hour after it happened. vaughn hillyard from nbc was on the plane as a member of the press corps. that plane went off the runway, skidded almost onto a highway. they closed down the airport after this landing. vaughn was able to get out of there, get in a cab and come straight to the studio to tell us what happened. what was amazing to me in that mom, obviously we are all relieved he and everyone else was fine. as soon as i asked him if he was okay, he instantly said, yeah, it was scary but this happens all the time. he'd been traveling on the pence campaign plane for our coverage of the election, and he said we've been having tons of hard landings. it's been scary all along. that was the night that it happened. by the following day "nbc nightly news" was able to put together a good portrait of what actually went wrong in that crash landing. >> reporter: on the tarmac today ntsb investigators were

examining the mud covered landing gear of the charter plane that carried governor mike pence. it was just before 8:00 p.m. on a rainy, windy night when the flight came in for a landing. suddenly, trouble. >> stop, stop. >> reporter: the plane was too far down the runway. >> we have an emergency in the airport. >> reporter: onboard with pence nbc news campaign embed vaughn hilliard. >> we started to go and slide off and that's when we came to a complete halt. >> reporter: the plane stopped just 300 feet from the highway thanks to the crushable concrete arrester beds like this at the end of the runway. >> okay. so that whole thing happened october 27th. it's right before the presidential election. a couple things about this incident. first of all, the ntsb did a full investigation and came to a very clear and damning conclusion what went wrong. their determination it was clearly pilot error. the co-pilot was at the controls

as they were bringing the plane in for a landing. the errors started early. first they reportedly flared the plane, they brought the nose of the plane up to slow it down. they started that maneuver too early. they started at an altitude almost twice as high as recommended for that plane. first officer then touched the plane down way too far down the runway. way too close to the end of the runway. this is a 7,000-foot runway. the officer didn't put it down until they passed the 4,000-foot mark, way past the point the pilot should have abandoned the landing, pulled back up, circled and come back in. they didn't do that. once the landing started to go wrong and they didn't try to take back off and land again there were further errors as they tried to bring the plane to a halt. according to the ntsb, the captain then tried to take

control from the first officer but the captain didn't announce that's what he or she was doing and that resulted in the pilot and first officer both simultaneously trying to control the plane during this fouled up landing and were apparently giving opposite instructions to the plane while it was skidding off the end of the runway and off towards the side and towards that active highway. they deployed the speed brakes too slow. it was bad. the ntsb said this was pilot failure. pilot error. the charter company for that flight later announced they developed some new flight crew training to address the issues that were identified during that ntsb investigation. so that's one part of this. the other part of it vaughn hilliard said that night when he came into the studio right after getting off that plane, he said, yeah, i was scared but this happens all the time. it was a running joke, dark humor among the press corps, that none of them would survive covering mike pence because the landings were so terrible. they had so many hard landings and bouncing off the runways.

it didn't feel safe to anybody who was on that plane. it was a consistently unsafe feeling environment according to reporters who were embedded with vice presidential candidate mike pence. well, it turns out that all happened at the end of october. the month before, the month before that crash landing at laguardia, that same charter company running the mike pence flights for the trump campaign, they had another trip through the headlines. in september 2016 "the guardian" newspaper reported the previous pilot they'd had flying the mike pence plane, he was wanted on violent felony charges. this was a guy who had been -- who was the chairman of a pro-trump law enforcement coalition in florida. i don't know if that's why they decided to give him the plum job of flying mike pence around the country but something about the vetting process didn't turn up the fact this particular guy was currently facing violent felony charges for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, allegedly

running over a co-worker with his car three times putting the guy in the hospital and seriously injuring him. the mike pence pilot pled not guilty to those charges, but it turned out there was another similar case pending against him from 2014 in which, again, he was accused of deliberately driving into another person, this time on a motorcycle. those incidents apparently including the pending felony charges, those apparently weren't a problem. just didn't pop in the vetting process when they were deciding who should fly mike pence and a whole bunch of beloved reporters around the country. and that was the month before -- they found out about that because of the press. they had to fire that guy the month before they ended up with a crew that overshot the runway, chewed up the asphalt, shut down laguardia airport. man, i mean, whoever was running the trump presidential campaign air fleet, that guy has a lot to answer for.

turns out he has landed on his feet. axios.com first to report today they are likely to nominate -- to be nominated to run the federal federal aviation administration in the actual u.s. government. for all of us. presumably only because the guy who ran over the other guy three times in his car isn't available.

maybe he will be secretary of transportation. and this is kind of a theme in the trump republican era. and there are a lot of scandals in this presidency and it is sometimes hard to focus on all the themes, but donald trump's golf caddie is the white house director of social media now. his longtime bodyguard is the director of oval office operations. there he is with the pope. eric trump's wedding planner was put in charm of hud for the northeastern united states. a member of the trump household staff at trump tower her husband ran a home contracting company called steve's tools in motion before he somehow ended up getting a job at epa region 2 headquarters in new york. this is the same president who named his bankruptcy lawyer ambassador to israel. a friend of his wife got a $26 million payout from the inaugural committee. that's just slightly more than the inaugural committee spent on the actual contractor who actually runs the inauguration and has done so for decades. what did melania trump's friend do on top of that and for more money? we don't know. so many scandals. who has time to chase something like that down? there was a lady from "the apprentice" who went on to the office of public liaison in the white house. while she worked there she worked alongside andrew giuliani. i wonder how he got that job. so now, you know, why not -- why not apply the same principle to all of american aviation?

after the white house staff secretary was found to have served in that incredibly sensitive job more than a year despite serious domestic violence allegations against him from his ex-wives which prevented him from getting a full security clearance, today was the first business day they were to operate under john kelly's new security clearance policy, the first business day, the first day at work in the trump white house where interim security clearances would be canceled. all access to sensitive materials cut off for anybody whose security clearance has been pending since before last june without that person being able to get a permanent clearance. this clearly is the situation that describes both the president's daughter and his son-in-law. but apparently they are keeping their jobs with or without security clearance, regardless of whatever supposed policy is in effect, regardless of the white house chief of staff, and regardless of any rules we know of that apply to this type of sensitive material.

i mean, presidential daughter is not a job from which you can be fired. if that's what you get hired to be, if white house daughter is senior white house official, how do you -- so what's going to happen here? i mean, one thing we can be proud of in this moment in american history is that we have built something here for future generations. in the future the textbook explanation, the textbook case studies about nepotism, about a friends and family approach to governance. in the future when there are after school specials about the uzbekistanization of the american government and what's wrong with that and why it doesn't work and what could possibly go wrong, those stories will be crystal clear. no ambiguity because of what we're living through now and thereby maybe future generations will figure out how to avoid this particular kind of mess. are defined by the things we share. and the ones we love.

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some breaking news just posted by "the new york times." i just referenced this in the "a" block, i swear i did not when i made the reference this news was about to break.

i swear, cross my heart. "melania trump parts ways with advisor after backlash over inaugural contract." this has been posted by "the new york times." read you their lead. melania trump has parted ways with an adviser after news about the adviser's firm reaping $26 million in payments to help plan the trump inauguration.

stephanie winston wolkoff has been friends for years, working as a senior adviser to the office of the first lady. mrs. trump's spokeswoman says now that the office of the first lady has severed its contract, according to two people with direct knowledge of the situation the move was prompted by displeasure from the trumps over the news that a firm created was paid nearly $26 million for event planning for mr. trump's inauguration. mr. trump was also enraged to learn that she brought on a close friend, david monn. mr. monn's firm was paid $3.7 million. she is complaining about news coverage of her role in the inauguration calling news coverage completely unfair but according to these reporters from "the times" she did not specify any errors. do we have ken on the line? have we been able to get him? joining us now by phone on unbelievably short notice is "new york times" reporter ken vogel. thank you very much for joining us at the drop of a hat. appreciate it. i was just mentioning the unusual nature of this large payment and this contract of the committee for this person who is a long-standing friend of melania trump, stephanie winston wolkoff.

the large size of the financial contract she was paid $26 million. do you have any clarity as to what exactly she was paid for? >> we can only go by sources who are familiar with what went on by the inaugural committee. the inaugural committee is registered as a 501-c-3 nonprofit and only has to file very vague information about its finances and even that is a significant lag time from when the spending and fund-raising actually occurred. so we only had this document showing how it spent its money in the loosest of ways, in the most cursory sort of detail last week even though it's more than a year and a half after the inauguration. or more than a year after the inauguration, and there's no detail about what was this $26 million contract went for.

what we understand is that stephanie wilson wolkoff did a lot of subcontracting to various other vendors. we're told her firm handled everything from paying for venues, rental venues to table settings to arranging instagram filters and even paying for satellite feeds for broadcasts for networks to carry the proceedings from the inauguration. she says, stephanie winston wolkoff says, her firm only got to keep $1.62 million -- only $1.62 million and even that was divided up amongst her 15 or so employees. i think even if you do the math you would conclude that's probably not too bad for just a couple months of work. >> and there's some unusual details about this. the firm set up by ms. winston wolkoff that was eventually paid this money, even if most of it was just passed through, a firm

set up only one month before the inauguration, set up in december of 2016. then there's the fact that back to i think maybe even back to truman the major contractor that runs inaugural events has been the same major contracting firm, and they get the same gig every year through democrats and republicans first and second inaugurations. they were also contracted by the trump inauguration. they ended up getting paid about as much money as melania trump's friend but we know what they did because they always do the inauguration and it's not exactly a no-bid contract but the sole source contractor for these things for the united states for decades. >> that's right. this is a firm that has been paid to do previous inaugurations, like you said, a firm that sort of specializes in producing trade shows. they're more of a known entity and this firm is not a known

entity but didn't even exist more than i think it was six weeks before the inauguration. so it was clearly set up. we did report that, in fact, melania trump did introduce this woman, stephanie winston wolkoff to tom barrack who is the longtime friend of donald trump, who was the chair of the inaugural committee, but people say -- people close to the inauguration say that it was actually mr. barrett's decision and not mrs. trump's decision to ultimately hire stephanie winston wolkoff. that said, other sources saying stephanie wilson wolkoff did throw around melania trump's name with transition officials and later when she went into the east wing as a special government employee, as a senior adviser to melania trump, she continued to behave in this way in what her colleagues and associates saw as an effort to get her way. she would flaunt her connection to melania trump.

obviously melania and donald trump concluded for whatever reason that this relationship was problematic for them, whether it was because of the bad press from the $26 million contract from the inaugural contract on the inaugural committee or something else. she is no longer working even as a volunteer for the east wing and for the office of the first lady. >> ken vogel reporting for "the new york times," thank you for joining us so quickly tonight with this breaking news story. congratulations on the scoop. >> yeah, thank you. it was a pleasure as always. >> again, that breaking news from "the new york times" just posted. the first lady has parted ways, the first lady's office has severed its relationship with stephanie winston wolkoff, a figure who first surfaced in national news when it emerged that a company she had just set up weeks before was paid $26 million, a quarter of the money that was raised and spent on behalf of the trump inauguration.

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we had previously known carter page had been approached by the fbi in 2013 because they wanted to talk to him about a russian spy ring operating in new york city. it was a spy ring that had tried to recruit carter page as an -- a russian intelligence agent. we knew that from the case the justice department brought against the russian spies in the case. we knew that before. this weekend we learned

something new. this weekend we learned carter page was approached again by the fbi. again about his links to russian intelligence but this time it happened a few years later. it happened in march 2016, which is the exact month that he joined up as a foreign policy adviser to the donald trump for president campaign. the fbi was meeting with carter page that month to talk to him once again about his ties to russian intelligence. really? that's new. we learned that new information this weekend in this memo, declassified, released by democrats on the house intelligence committee. this is the by-product of a lot of fighting and diversionary stuff that has happened on the intelligence committee as its chairman, republican congressman devin nunes has tried to turn it into an indictment of the fbi and the justice department. in the end, though, regardless of what the origin story was for this memo, what we got when we

got this democratic memo is just a whole bunch of straight up new information we didn't have before. we learned about that fbi meeting with carter page, the same month that he signed up with the trump campaign. we learned the exact date of the start of the fbi's counterintelligence investigation into the trump campaign. it started on july 31st, 2016. good to know. we learned that for all the republican efforts to make the christopher steele dossier some kind of scandal at the heart of the russia investigation, the justice department presented to a court in its surveillance warrant application for carter page, quote, additional information through multiple independent sources that corroborated steele's reporting. you want to know what that corroboration was? in the memo it looks like this. bullet point, redacted, redacted, footnote 12, redacted, redacted. two fully redacted paragraphs followed by a third which reads, quote, pages, blank, in moscow

with blank, senior russian officials, blank, as well as meetings with russian officials, blank, blank, blank, blank. footnote 13. so there's a lot here that's absolutely new information for us trying to figure out what's going on in our country, but there's also, interestingly, an explicit allegation this trump foreign policy adviser, carter page, there's an explicit allegation that he lied under oath to the house intelligence committee when he testified there in november. what exactly did he lie about? and if he did lie about it and the committee knows it for sure, what happens to that information? what happens next? the answer to that is here next. you wouldn't accept an incomplete job

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democrats on the house intelligence committee this weekend were finally able to get declassified and released into

the russia scandal, a memo. joining us now is congressman jim himes. thank you for being here. i know it was a pain and a long process and a big fight to get this memo declassified after the earlier republican memo had been declassified. are you happy that this is out? are you satisfied in terms of what was redacted and released to the public? >> i am. i sort of chuckled because of course the process to get the republican memo out was all of 72 hours over the objections of the fbi. we wanted to be a little bit more careful, give the fbi and doj, the department of justice, an opportunity to make sure we weren't disclosing additional classified information and, you know, lo and behold it got released on saturday night. not your most intense news hours.

i know what's behind the redactions, and the good news is the information we needed to get out there and tell the story that the nunes memorandum was misleading at best, you can read our memorandum and it's pretty esoteric, pretty technical. you can read our memorandum and see the nunes memorandum was an attempt to slime the federal bureau of investigation, the department of justice without any real basis. >> there's a lot of information specifically about foreign policy adviser to the trump campaign, carter page, because the whole basis of the nunes memo was the application to a court for a surveillance warrant against him. in explaining the further context you put into that warrant and the application for that surveillance there's a couple of very blunt statements. there's a couple places in this memo where information that is redacted, which is about what carter page did in moscow, is then followed up with a blunt statement like this. quote, this information contradicts carter page's testimony to the committee on november 2nd, 2017. and there's a whole bunch more redactions. this also contradicts his sworn testimony to our committee. a lot of this we can't see the

exact details because it is redacted, but there's a clear statement here that carter page lied under oath. is that the way that we should be reading that? is that what this means here? >> i chuckle a little bit because i was in the interview of carter page, and i have to tell you in the history of congressional interview of witnesses, this one was unique. and i'm not disclosing anything i shouldn't disclose because the carter page testimony pursuant to an agreement with him is available to the public. look, in the testimony that he gave to us, he contradicted himself in that testimony. we were asking and, again, you can look this up, about these

trips to russia and did he actually meet with anybody important. no, no, no. except for those people in the most senior levels of the russian government. the point here, rachel, the premise of the nunes memorandum, the republican memorandum, there was an abuse of the legal system by the fbi because they're biased against donald trump. now you remember what happened in the leadup to the election in terms of what jim comey was talking about in terms of investigation. you start out with that being crazy but then carter page if he's going to be your victim, he's going to be your victim that was sort of innocently doing and going about his business when the fbi -- look, this is a guy who as you pointed out the fbi had interest in for years, a guy who describes himself, describes himself as an adviser to the kremlin. i would argue, i guess, devin nunes did not maybe pick the most lilly white of people who say the fbi took an inappropriate interest in. >> if the intelligence committee is aware of information that mr. page did lie under oath, does the committee pursue that? does the department of justice pursue that? it's a crime to lie to congress. >> this is a little bit of a hard one because it was in his own testimony to us he contradicted his own testimony to us. i've never gotten a bead on carter page.

you wonder whether he's actually -- you know, what he's actually doing. we have bigger issues to go after. i won't try to prejudge what the ranking member might try to do. as you know steve bannon came before the committee and had this incredibly expansive claim of executive privilege, couldn't even ask him about the transition when the president wasn't president. we have some pretty big issues to deal with. i'm not sure his contradictions are at the top of the list. >> congressman jim himes, thank you, sir. i appreciate it. i will tell you the house intelligence committee tomorrow will hear from a very important, very powerful official. tomorrow they're going to get hope hicks. yes, it will be behind closed doors. we'll still try to figure out what happens. we'll be right back. stay with us. ♪ i feel like fire ( ♪ )

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quote, so i've been receiving a jillion calls from the press. am i at liberty to help them understand it? to explain what the provisions mean? this comes from the end of a court transcript that happened on friday where rick gates pled guilty to a couple felonies in the special counsel investigation and agreed to cooperate with the special counsel. at the end of the hearing, the lawyer for rick gates said he

has one final question he wants to ask the judge. he wants to know if he, the lawyer, can explain his clients new plea deal to the reporters who have been calling him about it. he asked the question to the judge. the judge responds by saying to the prosecutor, what do you think? the prosecutor then says this, he says, no objection so long as you do not talk about paul manafort. and then the judge says basically, quote, i clearly don't want you talking about the substance of mr. manafort's case. at which point rick gates's lawyer says to the court, no, no, no. so no talking about trump campaign chair paul manafort. if you're the lawyer for rick gates you can talk about the plea deal and explain how it goes but when it comes to paul manafort, ixnay on the talking. paul manafort goes forward facing multiple counts across two different jurisdictions but now he's facing them alone for

the first time. joining us now is benjamin wittes. it's good to see you. >> thank you. >> paul manafort, he has been -- his path has diverged from rick gates. a lot of people see that as something that greatly increases the pressure on paul manafort that may change the course of how his legal case proceeds. how do you see it? >> well, look, most people who are indicted by federal prosecutors, particularly good federal prosecutors, and the mueller team is extremely strong, are guilty. and most people who are indicted and rather than face charges plead to them eventually. and paul manafort is facing very serious charges.

he is, as you point out, facing them alone, and that -- and defending yourself against such charges is an extremely expensive and extremely risky proposition. and so the pressure on him is undoubtedly intense. >> mr. manafort put out a statement in response to rick gates's guilty plea that was an aggressive statement saying the reasons for rick gates doing this would eventually come out, he's expressing his disappointment, criticizing rick gates for having made the decision. that was reviewed by congressman adam schiff from the intelligence committee, he said he saw that as essentially mr. manafort making a public plea to the president for a pardon. i'm getting the sense for what mr. manafort is facing legally that a presidential pardon wouldn't get him out of the woods, that he'd face continued problems with nonfederal jurisdictions things a pardon

couldn't help him with. >> if he's relying on the presidential pardon right now, that's a pretty desperate situation, because a presidential pardon, among other things, would be extraordinarily politically difficult for president trump to do in this instance. so even if you're -- even if you're wrong and the only charges facing manafort are these federal charges and he has no exposure on anything at any state level, i still think it would be an extremely risky proposition to bank heavily on a pardon from president trump. >> do you think the democratic memo released this weekend is significant in advancing our understanding of the state of the counterintelligence investigation and the strength of the special counsel's case? >> i think it's a pretty significant document, and it's a

quite devastating document, actually. look, the whole issue around the nunes memo is a big distraction in the sense that, you know, the premises of the nunes memo was that the steele dossier was the origin story of the carter page fisa. while the nunes memo shows opposite of this, the significance of that claim is that a lot of people seem to believe falsely, that the carter page fisa is the origin of the russia investigation. and what is shown clearly, and not contradicted by anybody, is that, in fact, there was a lot more information about carter page than came from the steele dossier, there was a lot of reason for the fbi to be interested in carter page, as you pointed out, including recent interactions with the fbi

over his contacts with russian government officials. and, in any event, the carter page fisa had very little to do or nothing to do with the origins of the russia investigation, which predate it by several months. so i think it's a very significant corrective to a very upsetting incident in which the chairman of the intelligence committee essentially used the oversight process to lie about the fbi. >> benjamin wittes editor in chief of lawfare. thank you for being with us. >> thank you. >> we'll be right back. stay with us.

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that's our thing. call 1.800.directv just want to reup the strange breaking news we got this hour from the "new york the president and the first lady were dispolileased by how much stephanie wilson had been paid. that's it for us, now it's time for "last word with lawrence o'donnell." >> i bring greetings from dublin ireland, you have a lot of fans there. >> i grew up in a down called